Answering Interview Questions: “Share with us your philosophy of teaching and learning.”

Being a teacher is one of the hardest professions nowadays. One must have mastery of the subject matter to be taught, as well as the ability to carry out lessons to ensure that the students are learning. Your job as an educator is not all about teaching the students the lessons in the syllabus.

The interviewer will only not consider your knowledge and skills about the subject matter you are to teach, but also your ability to educate and make sure your students have really learned something. This requires you to have a teaching style or method as well as a philosophy of teaching and learning.

Thus, the hiring manager might ask you about your philosophy of teaching. There are 3 possible reasons why the interviewer would be asking you to share your philosophy of teaching and learning.

1. The interviewer is interested in how you will run your class and how you will teach your students.

2. The interviewer wants to know whether you are applying for the sake of having a job or if you really want to educate and share your knowledge.

3. The interviewer wants to know if you are willing to learn and improve through the teaching experience.

How should you answer this question?

Reflect. Take some time to recall your previous learning experiences from school. Think of the ways you truly learned from your teachers when you were in high school or college. Consider how you would want to be taught. Your teaching philosophy is a reflection of your experiences throughout the years you were inside the classroom, which has developed as you advance through higher education, as well as in the classrooms you have taught already.

Take note. After recalling your experiences, take note of the lessons(including life lessons) you learned from those experiences. Take note of how these lessons have affected you as a student and teacher. Your teaching philosophy should be a self-reflective statement about your beliefs on sharing and acquiring knowledge.

Write them down. You should keep a copy of your teaching philosophy to remind you to put it into practice in teaching and learning.

Review. Teaching styles and methods change, and so should your philosophy of teaching. Update your teaching and learning philosophy as you change and improve throughout your teaching experience. Be certain of your beliefs, but remember to stay open to improvement and development.

Once you have arrived at your own teaching and learning philosophy, think of examples of situations in which you can apply your philosophy and beliefs. Prepare interview answers in which you explain how you would handle those situations according your philosophy. Be sure that you really do believe in your own philosophy and could stand by it, no matter what.

Alan is the creator of Interview Success Formula, a training program that has helped more than 40,000 job seekers to ace their interviews and land the jobs they deserve. Interviewers love asking curveball questions to weed out job seekers. But the truth is, most of these questions are asking about a few key areas. Learn more about how to outsmart tough interviewers by watching this video.